{"id":869,"date":"2020-04-01T19:13:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T19:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=869"},"modified":"2020-04-04T18:14:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T18:14:33","slug":"idina-menzel-defied-gravity-at-chorale-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-defied-gravity-at-chorale-gala\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel defied gravity at Chorale gala"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Idina Menzel, the original Elphaba in <em>Wicked,<\/em> soared as she opened her performance with \u201cDefying Gravity,\u201d and just kept getting better as the night went on at Rhapsody, the Turtle Creek Chorale\u2019s 40th anniversary gala at The Statler on Saturday, Feb. 22.<\/p>\n<p>While singing \u201cLet It Go,\u201d Menzel said that was the point at which all the children in blue <i>Frozen<\/i> dresses usually begin dancing. But 7-year-olds in blue dresses, gay men in tuxedos \u2026 all the same and lots of fun. Everyone joined her for the second line of the chorus: \u201cCan\u2019t hold it back anymore.\u201d During one refrain, she said, \u201cNow all the straight men.\u201d Silence \u2026 followed by another in a long line of standing ovations she received throughout her performance.<\/p>\n<p>Menzel was clearly having fun. \u201cSeasons of Love,\u201d from her breakthrough role in <i>Rent<\/i>, was supposed to be the finale, but she couldn\u2019t wait to get to it and invited the chorale up to sing with her early. It sounded like 525,600 voices filling the Statler ballroom.<\/p>\n<p>The chorale\u2019s Christopher Wagley had a solo in \u201cSeasons of Love\u201d as well as a duet with her. I\u2019ve always enjoyed his solos at chorale concerts, but singing with Menzel, he held it together, sang as well as he ever does and proved how professional he is.<\/p>\n<p>Menzel went into the audience to sing \u201cTake Me or Leave Me,\u201d also from <i>Rent<\/i>, with some very talented audience members. With several of them, she just looked on in amazement as they sang.<\/p>\n<p>The evening was a huge success for the chorale. During the silent auction, five bidders offered $10,000 for a trip to Tuscany. The chorale actually had multiple trips available to offer, so in minutes it raised $50,000. Pledges haven\u2019t all been added but early estimates show the organization raised more than $525,600 for the evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Idina Menzel, the original Elphaba in Wicked, soared as she opened her performance with \u201cDefying Gravity,\u201d and just kept getting better as the night went on at Rhapsody, the Turtle Creek Chorale\u2019s 40th anniversary gala at The Statler on Saturday, Feb. 22. While singing \u201cLet It Go,\u201d Menzel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-59"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Menzel.Idina_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-e1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}